Pilfered From Work:
Bagel Count: 1
Salmon Count: 5 ounces
Chocolate Count: 5 Snicker’s Minis, 1 Twix Mini
Bottled Water Count: 2

This afternoon, a man entered the new building I work in and proceeded to analyze the entrance door hinges and tap the glass panes that make up the entryway foyer. Perplexed, a co-worker and I stared at him from the reception desk. Call me callous, but it’s my belief that you don’t walk into a building owned and operated by a Jewish organization, ignore their employees, and start tapping on their glass doorways unless you are calculating what type of explosive device you would need to use to make the most of obliterating a 12.5 million dollar facility. He was apparently oblivious to my suspicious ice stares of death as he continued to tap glass and scrutinize door hinges in a psychotic bliss that caused creases on his forehead to twitch in synch with his eyes.

“Can I help you?” I finally asked him.

“No. No. I’m just looking at your glass,” he answered.

“I see that…”

“This is the most amazing glass I’ve ever seen!” he exclaimed suddenly, “Simply amazing!” He spoke with an exclamation of sound for every word, and with each exclamation of sound, his forehead creases, eyebrows and eyelids raised upwards in praise of his heavenly <insert>god of choice</insert> for producing such wonderful panes of glass.

“You have a fetish for glass?” my co-worker asked him.

“Uh… I’m a contractor. I was just admiring your glass. Do you mind if I have a client come over and look at it?” Again, every word he spoke was an exclamation, even his hesitations or pauses of sound. I began to wonder if I could take him to court for mental trauma; surely it wasn’t legal to subject someone to such enthusiasm regarding glass.

“No, not really- as long as your client lets us know who they are before they start tapping on our door hinges,” I told him. I was serious, though perhaps he thought I was joking.

With that, the man blissfully leaped out of our main entryway, no doubt to skip and frolic through our landscaping off into the brilliant summer sun.

Two Hours Later…

I can always hear when someone has entered the building before they realize that they have actually entered the building. This is thanks to the foreboding front entry doors that crash shut immediately behind any person while they are navigating through the massive foyer. Once through the soul-sucking neon lighted perils of the foyer, they find themselves hit by a blinding natural light from our humidity controlled skylight. At this very moment they stand stunned in the headlights of overwhelming panic as they realize they have entered an enormous white building of Jewishness. Once their eyes become accustomed to the unusual brilliance of our building, the subjects then enter a state of terror where they turn this way and that way, flapping their hands and lips in frenzied and indecipherable signals. Perhaps it is the wide open space that was designed so one can see every point of activity upon entry, or perhaps it is merely the overwhelming size of the building, but whatever the case, it usually takes an excruciating moment of this intense panic before anyone realizes that there is a reception desk two feet away from them that has been outfitted with a caustic and jaded college student for their convenience.

You can imagine my suspicion when I heard the slam of the foreboding doors and looked up to find a woman had not only managed to navigate through the massive foyer but had also darted by the reception area without being stunned by the brilliance of the humidity controlled skylights in the split second it took to turn my caustic and jaded head away from the computer.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” I called after her. She didn’t even glance towards my general direction as she ran off towards the dank recesses of our 5.1 million dollar concrete dinning facility. “Excuse me!” I called after her in growing alarm, my voice echoing upwards to the second story.

I jumped up and chased her echoing footsteps, only to find her standing in the darkness of the dinning room tapping at the glass windows. “Would you like a tour?” I asked her with my cheerfully caustic and jaded voice.

“No. I’m just looking at the glass.”

“I see that…” I trailed off, realizing she was the client who was supposed to tell me who she was before she began tapping on our glass and examining our door hinges.

“My last name is Rosen, so you don’t have to worry about me bombing the place,” she said immediately, which did very little to ease my fears. “My contractor called me and told me to look at your windows. He said you had wonderful windows. Building a house is a hard thing. You have to look at so many windows. Not many places have special windows like this.”

“Well, I can give you a tour if you�d like,” I suggested again.

She stared blankly. “No. That won’t be necessary. I’m here to see the windows. Just the windows.” She paused for a moment, and then added, “My last name is Rosen, so I’m Jewish. Can’t blame you for being suspicious, but I’m here to see just the windows.”

“Sorry about that, but we get a lot of freaks around here,” I said as I walked back to the reception area. “If you have any questions about the glass or our contractors, I’d be willing to answer them for you.”

She trailed behind me and stopped near the door, staring at me intensely as I sat down at my desk. “Actually, do you know where you got that?” she asked suddenly pointing her finger in the direction of our three old fashioned glass candy jars.

“The candy jars?”

“Yes. That has to be the most beautiful glass I’ve ever seen.”

I squinted at the jars. From my perspective, the glass was distorted and misshapen with thick uneven seams protruding like a spine from the backs. “I’m not sure. I think they’re just cheap jars we got at a cooking or restaurant supply store a long time ago.”

“Do you mind if I take a picture?” she asked, pulling a disposable camera out of a lump-filled tan purse. I shrugged my consent. “This is wonderful! You find the most amazing things in the strangest places!”

“That you do,” I agreed, looking at her suspiciously from the corner of my eye.

How do you follow an inspiring month in Rome? I’ve been at a loss for words lately- everything I write seems trivial after my intensive writing courses abroad. I guess it’s because I’ve lived near/in Seattle my entire life. Perhaps I’m so used to the people and the city that inspiration doesn’t fly into my face.

I always carry a notebook (or two) with me for writing and jotting down notes while on the bus, but I’ve found myself simply examining the grains of a blank page for the duration of my bus rides to and from work. When I come home, I throw my bag and notebook down on the couch, stare for a moment at the notebook outlined by the deep green fabric of my futon, and have a sudden desire to rip my hair out in frustration. In an attempt to be melodramatic, I’ve even gone so far as to actually attempt ripping my hair out in frustration, but I always immediately stop as I’ve found it hurts too much.

So, in an effort to combat my stagnant writing skills, I am going to regale my few loyal readers with tales from work this week. If that doesn’t scare off the five or so readers I have, then I must say that your loyalty is impressive.

I replaced the toothbrush head on my Sonicare today because I had been using the other one longer than six months. When it comes to your standard everyday hand-operated toothbrush, I’m really good about replacing them by the six month of use. In fact, I usually loose them before that time. If I don’t loose them, I usually throw them out because they’ve been stained with red wine from one of my college binge drinking events. But when it comes to a Sonicare toothbrush replacement that costs roughly $9 per a brush (versus free toothbrushes from the dentist), I conveniently forget how long I’ve been using any particular attachment.

So, I replaced my Sonicare toothbrush head today, and it freaked me out. Its noise level doubled and I could feel sonic waves pulsating down to the very root-tips of my teeth, spreading outwards through the rest of my body. When I moved the toothbrush to my upper teeth, waves pulsated through my brain and violated the roots of my hair so violently I began to wonder if I would go bald, and if anyone would believe that it was the fault of Sonicare. What would have happened if my fillings popped out? The fact that I have two-point-five fillings is a constant source of internal grief, and I’d be terribly angry if I had to replace those two-point-five fillings at any date in the near future.

I don’t remember replacing the last toothbrush head as being such a big deal. Perhaps my money-mongering ways made me wait a little too long this time. But think of what $9 could buy! That’s twelve packs of gum, eight of my favorite ball point pens, seven bagels with cream cheese, three bubble teas, and almost one paperback book.

Dear Pilot Corporation of America:

Your “G-2” pen sucks. Not only is the design of your “contour rubber grip” so uncomfortable that it hurts when writing, but the ink flow is non-existent. This is unacceptable for a pen that costs over one U.S. dollar. When I buy a package of two pens for $2.95 plus Washington State sales tax, I expect to buy a quality pair of disposable pens. If I was interested in cheap crap, I would buy a ten pack of Bic knock-offs from Office Depot for one-third the price of your two pens. Perhaps you should concentrate more on the comfort and function of you wares than on the dated “new age” design you mistakenly think to be stylish.

Agitatedly,

Mindy M.

Dear University District Rite-Aid:

You suck. Not only do you not carry my favorite type of pen, but you are also host to the rudest employees in the U-District. Every time I shop in your store, I’m glared at after asking for help, shoved aside while shopping in the aisles, and forced to stand in a long line of angrily huffing customers while your employees avoid the cash registers.

I also hate your store layout and the fact that your checkout counter is modeled after a UFO wedged between two mountains. Where the hell do you think your customers are supposed to line up around that monstrosity of a checkout counter when you only ever have one checker available at a time (if that)? Bartell’s is only a few blocks away, and although they are much smaller and have less of a selection, they manage to have more checkers operating tills than you ever do. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the employees at Bartell’s on the Ave actually smile at me when I walk in.

Agitatedly Huffing,

Mindy M.

I’ve been home for a week and a half, and I’m still adjusting to Seattle. I’ve lived in Seattle for four years, and my entire life before that I was no more than thirty minutes away. I spent five weeks away from home and now everything I see is different. The people are less trim, the food is dense and served in immense portions, the nightlife is even worse than before, the laid-back Seattle fashion is now frumpy, everyone seems paranoid that harm will befall them if they look into someone’s eyes, and no one talks to me on the street unless they already know me or they are being lewd.

The only time my eyes meet another’s is if I catch them in the act of sneaking a look at me. After living in Rome where everyone looked at everyone evenly in the eye, it feels like the citizens of this city are shoplifters gauging the employees of their targeted store. Here, people snake their eyes over their surroundings and when they find something interesting that moves and breaths, they stare long enough to be noticed. The split second their gaze is seen and returned, their restless eyes continue to slither haphazardly across buildings, people and wads of gum embossed on the sidewalk just long enough to seem like they never stopped moving.

On my third day home, I returned to the daily soul-sucking routines of my life. But unlike two months ago, I didn’t get off the bus and climb up sagging steps to a barn-style rental house. I didn’t sit at a desk facing a wall and located inside a hot and stuffy room crammed with one copier, a fax machine, two computers and a network system for the eight computers, Instead, I entered the looming state-of-the-art facility I had watched grow from plans tacked to a wall in the original 1950’s facility where I worked to the fully realized, multi-million dollar sucking project it now was.

Upon coming back home, my work environs would be different, but I was still unprepared. The massive space I now work in, the poor lighting immediately above my desk, and the way the building manages to suck up any sound made in the “office suite” is hard to adjust to. It’s not only the complete opposite of Rome, but it’s unfamiliar.

I’ve been home for a few days now, and every day someone asks me how my stay in Rome was. “It was really fun,” I always tell them for lack of better words. This is almost always received with a moment of perplexed silence and a confused stare. Some people even go so far as to say with incredulity: “you were in Rome for an entire month, and it was just fun?” Which makes me wonder what response they’re looking for. Do they expect me to say something overdramatic with tears streaming down my cheeks? “It was the most amazing experience of my life and I feel a seed inside my chest that has started to germinate into an amazingly glorious flower!”

When I feel the need to justify my description of Rome as being “really fun”, I then say, “it was a very intense five weeks because my professors were slave-drivers.” The response is then a look of shock and a comment to the effect of: “Oh… You were taking classes?” Everyone seems to think that I was spending my days going to the beach, dancing over rolling Tuscan hillsides and idly touring various Roman monuments at my own pace, and while it’s true that I had hoped living in Rome would be a relaxing break from classes, working, and paying bills, my main reason for going was to take intensive classes to improve my writing. The only day I had free to go to the beach and run through over Tuscan hillsides was Sunday- which is not long enough of a day to leave the city, enjoy my destination and return for class early Monday morning. Every day other than Sunday consisted of three to four hours of intensive walking around and paying attention to lectures in the morning; a four hour break to walk home, eat lunch, and do homework; and then four to sometimes five- or even six- hours of evening class in a hot and stuffy room with fans that managed to make the air hotter and windows that opened to vents which spewed out air from the stale pits of hell.

But despite the class hours and the requirement to sit still in a room on sharp Ikea chairs in heat-decayed air, I lived a life free from the drudgeries of habit and comfort and enjoyed a city unlike any I’ve seen. I was able to live in that city for a month and see beneath the ancient patina of massive monuments into a world invisible to those who visit for a small time. I spent hot Sunday afternoons eating gelato on fountain steps facing an empty Pantheon, weekday afternoons lounging and writing in a dark bedroom shut against the heat, and early mornings running over uneven cobblestones and yelling greetings to pink-eyed merchants watering plants and scrubbing windows. I also enjoyed many warm evenings sitting on the concrete banks of the Tiber River drinking wine and tequila, my drunken eyes trying in vain to track the quick movements of bats darting under and over a pedestrian bridge.

Last night, while waiting for a second pitcher of margarita slush to appear, a friend asked me to tell him the worst things I experienced in Rome. I was able to answer him with the three worst memories of my trip in a matter of minutes. Another friend became irritated and asked why we were talking about the negative aspects, and my friend answered: “because it’s obvious most of her trip was fun, and that it would take too long to talk about all of the cool things she saw during her month there.” And as absurd as it may sound, he’s right for now. Maybe later, as the memories of Rome become less vivid, I’ll be able to tell someone that my trip was more than “really fun”. But for now, if you ask me how my trip was, don’t be surprised when I answer, “it was really fun.”

As of today, my dog is officially no longer a Liorat. The poor thing was subjected to constant humiliation the month I was gone as Tyler brought people over to laugh at her unfortunate circumstances. I don’t doubt that he treated her like a freak-show attraction and charged a fee.

I’m in Rome, and have been since my flight landed on June 15th. I’ve seen a lot of monuments, learned about those monuments, and endured countless days of heat and black dust and torturous lectures that never end. It’s been fun for the most part- even the living in a six bedroom apartment with twelve people and two semi-working showers with small hot water tanks. I’ve had my bad days, my homesick days, and my pissed-off days. But I’ve had more good days than bad, homesick, or pissed-off, so I’d say it’s been a good experience so far. I have ten more days before I go home.

I’ve been writing about my experiences everyday, most of which I’m still working on putting online. I have very little time, and I made the mistake of having a grand plan to create a special Rome section for when I was here. It took me awhile to smooth out the details of my Rome section, at the sacrifice of not being able to put a lot of entries into the blog. I plan to slowly work on this until I leave, or possibly even after I leave. So, if you’re interested, check out the archives in a week or so.

For now and until I return to Seattle, here’s the ugly link to my Rome section:

http://www.mikania.com/rome